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A Gun for Hire

Following in the wake of the successful Mind and Body (2008), Lucien Hervé 100 (2010) and The Birth of Photography (2012), the Museum of Fine Arts will again provide the venue for a new exhibition on photographic art.

The comprehensive oeuvre exhibition to run from the beginning of April will be displaying close to 250 photographs by Helmut Newton, one of the most authentic figures of twentieth-century photography. The show will take place thanks to cooperation with the Helmut Newton Foundation founded by the artist’s wife.

Helmut Newton was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century photography whose name is synonymous with the revolutionary photography published in famed fashion magazines. The novel themes and positioning of his works often shocked and scandalised people, yet it cannot be denied that he transformed photography used in the advertising of his day. His central subjects were nudity, power, fashion, money, sensuality and brutality. He cannot simply be coined a fashion, a nude or a portrait photographer since his work over five decades spans several genres and is thus difficult to categorize.

He was attracted to taking pictures from a young age and when he grew up photography became a true passion for him. Thanks to the advertising and fashion shoots he did for noted designers and newspapers photography not only brought Helmut Newton a lot of pleasure but also created a comfortable livelihood for him. He said that for him the only thing of interest was the shape of a model’s body, although through his pictures he created his own peculiar atmosphere which distinguished him from other photographers. Viewers of his pictures are shocked and captivated by his unusual choice of subjects and dispassionate approach yet given an insight into the intimate moments and private lives of others. The portrait photos of his models are completely unique and characterised by intimacy and cold detachment. The list of celebrities he took photographs of is almost endless and it is suffice to mention but a few: Monica Belluci, Catherine Denevue, David Bowie, Claudia Schiffer, Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weawer, Linda Evangelista, Gena Rowlands, Madonna, Kate Moss, Carla Bruni, Ornella Muti, Cindy Crawford, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, and Andy Warhol.

Helmut Newton’s Illustrated contains a selection of his photos from a period of ten years published by the artist himself to enable him to put together his own selection that would show the heterogeneousness of his work independently of the wishes of editors, clients and specific exhibitions. He produced four editions in total: two were published in 1987 titled Sex and Power and Pictures from an Exhibition. In 1991 these were followed by I Was There, in which he probed into issues related to truth and falsehood. He produced the last of the four in 1995, the cover of which shows Newton himself lying on the ground and leaning on his elbow on the banner of one of his own nude pictures; the volume’s title is Dr. Phantasma.

The titles of the volumes say at least as much as their themes and each issue soon became popular among collectors. With their provocative mishmash of nudity, journalistic shots and portraits courting sensationalism these volumes became defining and powerful visual documents of the 80s and 90s.

The volume A Gun for Hire surveys Newton’s fashion photos from the 1960s right up to his last work he made for the Italian Vogue – photos he took as a “gun for hire”. Included among his clients were Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Blumarine and Mugler. The title comes from a much quoted saying by Helmut Newton, “Some people's photography is an art. Mine is not. If ... If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that's fine. But that's not why I do them. I'm a gun for hire.” ("Newsweek", 02/02/04). As he said himself, his success was not thanks to the museums but rather to consumer society. He started out from the conditions set by the clients and a given budget, but he freely reinterpreted the collections, thus creating his own inimitable mishmash of elegance, consumerism and fashion photography.

HELMUT NEWTON 1920 ̶ 2004

Museum of Fine Arts 3 April ̶ 14 July 2013